In the news

• Pages: 29-29

A glimpse into the “nanoscopic” world

A team of U.K. researchers re cently demon strated the world’s most powerful optical micros cope offerin g

scientist s a glimps e of the “nanosc opic” world usin g tiny glas s beads to capture an d channel “evanescent

waves” of light to a stand ard microscope. T his new tech nique reporte d in Nature Communications allows

researchers to simply l ook down a m icroscope to se e with their own eyes det ails which are normally onl y

visible using indirec t meth ods su ch as atomic force microsc opy or scann ing el ectron microscopy. The

team beli eves that this breakthrough i s very promis ing for biologic al research, pa rticularly i n studying the

activiti es of cells, bacteria an d viruses at the nanoscal e.

Morocco launches new fund for innovation

The Government of Morocco is to allocate some US$56 million to promote innovation and encourage

partner ships between universities and research institutes and the busines s community. The initiative w as

announced by Morocco’s M inister for In dustry, Commerce and New Technologies, Ahmed Reda, at the

Second Conference on Inn ovation in Skhirat , Morocco on M arch 1, 2011. The funds are being launched

within the cont ext of a compreh ensive nati onal plan to prom ote research and i nnovation for economic

developme nt.

New rights delivery platform simplifies

copyright clearance

The U.S.-based Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization and leading provider of li-

censing solutions, recently launched its Rights Delivery Platform. For the first time, using the copyright.com

platform users can search for and obtain permission to use and share content from the world’s leading titles

in a wide range of fields including science, technology, medicine, humanities, news, business, and finance.

“Our goal continues to be simplifying the process of obtaining copyright permissions,” said Diane Pierson, Vice

President, Marketing, Copyright Clearance Center. “Our one-stop-shop portal now has millions more rights

than ever before.” The platform also offers enhanced search by publication type, country of publication or lan-

guage and allows international customers to pay via credit card in their local currency.

IN THE NEWS

YouTube and the Association of Polish Aut hors and

Composers (ZAIKS) recently signed a licensing

agreement which took e ffect on Jan uary 1, 20 11 to

protect the c opyright of Polish artists and guaran-

tees roya lty payments for video-c lips in whic h they

feature o n Yo uTube.

Under the agreement, Pol ish artists reg istered at

ZAIKS will re ceive an undisclos ed percentage of th e

revenue YouTube ear ns from adver ts displayed

alongside the video- clips.

Mr. Ar tur Waliszewski , the bu siness mana ger for

Google (Poland ) which owns YouTube, sa id the

agreement is a milestone for Polish art ists offer ing

them both promotional oppor tunities and f inancial

compensat ion.

YouTube has signed m ore than 10,000 sim ilar

agreements with copyright organizations around

the worl d.

European Union registers 1,000th quality food name

YouTube signs deal with Polish artists

On February 15, 2011, the European Commission reg-

istered the 1000th quality food name,

Piacentinu Ennes

,

an Italian sheep’s cheese from the Sicilian province of

Enna. Since 1992, the EC has operated two registers

for the names of agricultural products and foodstuffs

– the register for protected designations of origin

(PDO) and protected geographical indications (PGI)

and the register for traditional specialities guaranteed

(TSG). Registration of such quality products is de-

signed to prevent fraud and imitation. Of the thou-

sand products registered, 506 are PDOs, 465 are PGIs

and 30 are TSGs. European PDO-PGI products repre-

sented an estimated turnover of some 14.2 billion eu-

ros in 2007 according to an EC study.